Richard LeFrak purchased out ex-partners Ezra Katz and Michael Swerdlow in Aventura's Soffer family, to build the 183-acre Biscayne Landing site in the Northern part of Miami. The developer and billionaire from New York first moved to rechristen the So Le Mia project, a plan on the new Miami and owner's name.
"I wanted nothing to do with what the other guys did," LeFrak explained during a phone interview with The Real Deal. "That's why we don't use the name."
In June 2015, when the Soffers and LeFrak did the ground breaking, they showed a very ambitious blueprint of the community. The first stage of construction is set to start next year, and includes developing a 400,000 to 500,000-square-foot mall that may have restaurants, a bowling alley and a sporting goods store, based on the report of Jackie Soffer, who is checking on the project with Jeffrey, her brother.
"It's a chance to create a brand-new community," LeFrak further explained to The Real Deal. "If you went to 100 developers with this, 99 would turn the other way because it is too big, too complicated. They don't have the capital and they don't have the experience."
"I know what I am doing and I am not motivated by an immediate profit return," LeFrak explained, adding that the Soffers' Turnberry Associates, his building partner, is no droop either when it comes to developing big.
The LeFrak-Soffer entity, Oleta River Partners, the owner of the project, are also planning a 40,000-square-foot dine-theater and a 220,000-square-feet corporate place, to provide for commercial buildings. By 1992, the city had made it into a contract with the EPA needed by North Miami to do the site's clean up. The EPA diminished the Munisport site from the list of the Superfund seven years later, and the signed contract of the North Miami project sought to eradicate the contaminated soil.